I have mentioned before that Marlo has an internal clock that goes off at exactly 5:30AM every morning, never a minute before, never a minute after. Here's where I could refer to her as a turd, but hey, that's pretty damn consistent. A good quality in a human being. Add that to her other amazing qualities – 1) thinks farts are funny, and 2) understands that whiskey made outside of Kentucky cannot technically be referred to as bourbon — and you've got yourself right there a kid who is going to kill it in wood shop.

Because of this I've had to sacrifice (willingly) the ability to stay awake past 9PM, 9:30PM at the latest. And last week after attending the opening social at Alt Summit, only to return home a few minutes before midnight, I was like, dude, if I wake up and suddenly I'm a pumpkin, I want you to send a mean email to my fairy godmother and end it with a hearty UNFOLLOW!

That was the latest I had stayed up in a hundred years, and the following morning hit me in the face like the back of a frying pan. Mainly because my days are now a dead run from 5AM until my head hits the pillow at night with no breaks anywhere whatsoever. And I can handle this pace as long as I've got at least eight hours of sleep in my fuel tank. Yes, eight. I know that some of you are rolling your eyes because you eat people like me for breakfast, the one that you're having after only 15 minutes of sleep, and that's after four straight days of no sleep at all while running the government of a small country. You win.

Having said all this, I really cherish the time we spend together in those first quiet moments of the day, and it is these moments that were much of the motivation behind wanting another kid. Because OMG BABY. Marlo is a full on baby now. She is erupting with personality, one that resembles a sine curve, really soft and mellow all the way to DID I SAY YOU COULD LEAVE THE ROOM, WOMAN? I DIDN'T THINK SO.

And because she wakes up so early, we get to spend about an hour together, the three of us in bed, until Marlo has had about enough. She'll grant us that hour, make it seem as if all our funny faces and voices are the reason she wanted to get up, but then she starts contorting her body in any way she can so that she can get a good look at the door. Because The Second Act is bound to come in at any moment, and if Leta sleeps in an extra minute or two Marlo will shoot toward the opposite end of that curve and it's all WHERE ARE MY DAMN WAFFLE FRIES.

When Leta does stumble in, blear-eyed and hair a flame of tangles, she doesn't say hello to us or even acknowledge our existence. It's MARIO! MARIO! MARIO! and she hops up in bed so that her nose is touching Marlo's forehead. Marlo's reaction is so violent that you might think something was wrong. In fact, you might believe she was dying. Because she starts to hyperventilate and smack herself in the knees while simultaneously squawking like a chicken being tased in a bathtub.

Those two kids adore each other. And I'm not going to get all sappy on you, but the magnitude of it fills the room every morning. It is giant, mammoth, knock-you-over electrifying. And Jon and I deliberately remind ourselves to stop and soak it in, to be present for it, to push away the thoughts of the dead run ahead of us and admire the magnificence that is our children. Ok, I lied. I just got all sappy on you. MINUS TEN POINTS FOR ME.

(Imagine me, cat-like, hanging from the ceiling by all four paws, my entire bloodstream filled with shots of espresso. Like, a demonic Garfield! Meowsies!)

Today is a hugely super dooperly enormous day here at the Blurbodoocery, one where everyone is running around slapping duct tape up here and over there, hoping that the energy emanating from our office doesn't blow the doors off the house. Although that would kind of be cool as it would give the neighbors something to talk about other than the way that Armstrong woman is always standing on the porch in her pajamas screaming COCO!! as that little skunk runs around the yard barking at grass.

Note: We no longer refer to Coco as Coco. She is always addressed as COCO!!, with lips pursed and a bit of a growl in the throat. It is also the most frequently used word in the house.

I am so excited and thrilled and DEMONICALLY GARFIELDED to announce that I have signed an exclusive development deal with HGTV.

H to the G to the T to the V.

HGTV!

You can see me here! And here is the official press release.

I am joining the HGTV talent family, as they call it, and I could not be more over the moon. I'm all the way to Jupiter. The air is very thin and dry up here.

There are a lot of projects and ideas in my life that I've wanted to develop but haven't had the resources to do so, and HGTV is the perfect partner to help me take this next step. I think what we're planning to do is going to be fun and spectacular and a fantastic addition to what I already do over here. And yes, I'll still be posting on my regular schedule here on this Internet Website Blog Thing. Y'all, I would never take Chuck away from you. Unless you started upholstering your couch in denim, and I'd be all, hmm....

I cannot wait to take you all along for this exhilarating ride! Meowsies!

Many thanks to Katie Granju for her stalwart support and role in the project development (you can find her on Twitter at @kgranju). I can't gush enough about her vision and wisdom. Also, it's great to know that I have someone in Knoxville who can buy me a bourbon.

Now, back to hanging from the ceiling!

Tomorrow morning I'm hosting the keynote breakfast at the Altitude Design Summit here in Salt Lake City where I will be sharing the stage with people I consider to be visionary superstars: Jean Aw of NotCot, Grace Bonney of Design*Sponge, and Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan of Apartment Therapy. You're probably wondering why a mommyblogger is anywhere within a hundred miles of that stage, and I bet they will, too, once I finish the forty-slide presentation I've prepared on how to apply healing balm to cracked nipples. The packaging on that stuff is HOTT.

That's where I've been today, cramming all the final details into that presentation, just like always putting it off until the deadline looms over me like a piano falling out of the sky. It's a skill I perfected in high school when I would do homework for one class while sitting in the one directly before it, and then in college I would shove a semester's worth of data into my brain just minutes before a test. I had a psychiatrist once tell me that this is a definitive sign that I have adult ADD, and then he prescribed me Adderall which is basically speed in prescription form. And the next day I was all THIS FEELING CAN'T BE LEGAL, and the psychiatrist was all, no, that's called feeling normal! And I was all NO. I have just built a pyramid out of sugar cubes that is in exact scale to the ones in Egypt because I have already cleaned the house, washed the car, mowed the lawn, and wallpapered the bathroom. AND IT'S NOT EVEN 8AM.

Needless to say, I got a different doctor. Except if you follow the line of thinking in this post you're probably going, um, Heather, maybe he was on to something.